Gas Prices v Open House

Chris:

Last week one of the agents I work for asked me to "pretend" I was a buyer and search the internet in her area for a home to see what comes up.

Naturally, I went to Realtor.com. When I got the list of homes there are tabs at the top for sorting (ie, by price). One of the tabs is Featured Tour. If you click on it all the homes with virtual tours get sent to the top of the list. So, what does that tell you about how people are searching for homes?

Debbie Higgins

Chris - I have a feeling that open houses will be seeing fewer visitors in all markets.  I also believe that many buyers are spending far more time online doing their own research before they ever contact an agent.

Agents need to put themsleves in the shoes of the prospective buyer, and not in the shoes of what they want.

It has been proven time and again that the WWW has changed the way that buyers look for real estate. They start on the Web. They might visit a specific open house, but by and large, they start on the web. You have to go where the buyers are. Why not get them when they start.

Forcing them to come to you, with $4 gas might still work. You do have to show your listings, but, from what I hear, daily, getting your website and website traffic in order works better, 24/7,  not just for a few hours on weekends.   

I definitely agree that the internet is the way to go.  With the economy  the way it is, no telling when buyers will be ready to bite.  However, it is a sure bet that they will be looking to do so as efficiently as possible.  No better way than leveraging the power of the internet to save $$ in their search.  Virtual tours are definitely the way to go!!

Thanks for the great thought provoking post.  I completely agree.  Today more and more buyers start their search on the internet.  The confusion comes in when people click on that "virtual tour" button at Realtor.com.  What do they expect to find?  I recently blogged about this same subject.  My feeling is that most expect to find the 3-D flash or java where you can stand in a room and spin 360 dgrees.  More often than not though you will find a movie tour or a slide show with voiceover.  To me these technically are still tours, but I feel it sours the "virtual tour" market.  Finally- the people viewing your listing on the internet are usually just casual observers.  I would say only about 15-20% are actually people looking to purchase in the next 3 months.  Most of the others are made up of neighbors, speculators, and people trying to compare for sale properties with their home to see how much their house may be worth.  This is a necessity howvever to generate buzz about your property and access that 15-20% of people.  Who knows- the other 80% may have friends or family looking for a home and will refer your listing to them.  Other sites I would recommend posting your listing to would be zillow.com and craigslist.com.

I offer floor plans and as much as I would love to think these would be more valuable than virtual tours, I have not had the positive response that I expected.